The Journals
by Luciddreamer326
Summary: The musings of Mulder on a few lonely days


_The Journals_

I write because there is not a lot to do. She seems to bloom now when the cherry blossoms do. I haven't seen them in years but I know this is the season they are on fire. The wind carries her too, like the blossoms. I see her only when the breeze has stopped blowing. I miss her like those absent fragments of the spring.

Sometimes, these traveling fragments hit my window. I trace the curvatures of the petal like I used to trace her body. My fingers forget her too often now. Just as her brain has forgotten me it seems.

Often, I think about echoing my brain mumblings to her. What good would it do? We have a movement of our own in the mechanism of the world. She comes to me on the days she thinks of my face and curls into a tiny ball inside of my sheets. On these days, she sometimes weeps and I feel her shoulders sag so low that they hit the invisible ground. No trail of my fingertip down her cheek can soothe the void I see inside her on these days. I say nothing. My heart cries its own tears.

I pray she will come back tomorrow.

She never does.

* * *

I called her.

I could imagine her delicate lips close to the receiver. Never in my life had I wished to be an inanimate piece of plastic.

"Hello?" she asked.

I said nothing, just sent short puffs of breath into the phone. Idly, I thought back to a situation similar to this with me lying on a hard floor in my drunken, drug induced euphoria. "Creep," she had muttered then. I smiled at this thought and opened my mouth to speak.

Too late. Only dial tone.

I can do nothing but hang up. She won't be able to trace me. I blocked the number and we are no longer able to access the amenities we once had. She must sit in darkness. The same darkness I sit inside of within my heart.

To rid my mind of her, if only for a few fleeting seconds, I poke through files dealing with the paranormal. My focus wanes and instead of seeing faces of random people, I only see hers. Everywhere. She is inescapable.

Even when I lean back in my chair, my eyes scan the room and see reminders of her. The picture of the tour bus for the Roswell Grays even makes me think of her. Of clear, starry nights when my arms were wrapped firmly around her waist and a baseball bat. Of when she didn't mind being near me. When it is what lit us both on fire.

* * *

It's his seventh birthday. I try to clean the house, do some work, throw a basketball at the backboard perhaps a little more harshly than I should. It seems that when I ache for him, I ache for her as well. They are connected to me.

I began the morning with caffeine and fresh air. Sleeping seemed pointless, a waste of time. All that ever occurred was tossing absently in my sheets, rooting around for some straying scent of her. Her deposits are few and far between now. I chased scent shadows in deep hours. I was crazy.

The coffee was hot, too hot really. But I brought my lips to it anyway, knowing full well the impending result. When my tongue collided with the molten liquid, I spat out a curse and flung the contents across the yard. Anger pulsed in me. I screamed. Of course, no one heard me. Maybe a bird, maybe a tree or squirrel or something else I didn't care about.

What's to do? I shuffle to the bedroom, kicking my shoes into the middle of the floor. No one will care that I chunked them wherever they land. No set of feet will trip over them, save my own. I sit on the end of the bed, dangling my feet over a tiny footstool at the end of the bed. Another reminder.

Flopping back on the bed, I stare at the ceiling for a little while. My back hurts eventually and I turn on my side. The nightstand sits within an arm's reach, books stacked on top of the shiny wooden surface. I glance at the titles, one sparking my interest. I never bothered to look through her things. I gave her space. In a world full of closeness, I could offer her my trust, my knowledge that her things were hers and if I were to see them, she would grab my hand and show me.

But she is not here. She has not been here in many nights. I lose count. I flip pages.

I highly suspect there is some meaning to this book. D.H. Lawrence is artsy, intellectual. Just like her. I see from only the cover why she would like it. I flick through, not sure where to settle my eyes. The number 420 leaps out. I stop. I read.

"She was the only thing that held him up, himself, amid all this. And she was gone, intermingled herself. He wanted her to touch him, have him alongside with her. But no, he would not give in...He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow her."

I fling the second item of the day. It hits too close to home. Of course it does. I had love knocking on the doorstep of my heart and I only glanced at it. Love doesn't have special hours. But ours did. I sacrificed happiness for work static. She risked everything to rid me of bars. She abandoned a life to follow me. I was consumed with the grandeur of truth and she inched away from me slowly. She retracted and sat in silence. When I turned around, she was already gone.

These thoughts unnerve me.

I burn a microwave pizza. I fling a third item. I cry.

* * *

It's been a few weeks I surmise. But I don't know for sure. It's not like I count anymore anyway.

I jump when my phone rings, the sound long lost in my eardrums. Grabbing it off the coffee table, I stare at the caller id. My heart hitches and I answer instantly.

"Hello?" It comes out a question. I know the answer.

"It's me," the voice says, faintly.

I know it's her! I try to placate my mind with the thousands of thoughts storming in it. God knows I don't want to mess this up. What if she never calls again?

"I know. It's good to hear your voice," I concede.

For a moment, I think I hear a faint smile. All too soon it is gone. Silence butts its gritty head between us and overtakes everything. We are frozen, immobile, and stuck.

"So…" she trails off.

"So…" I repeat.

"…" More silence.

"I need to see you," I spurt out.

"Mulder," she warns.

"What could it hurt?" I offer lightly. But I know what it could hurt. I could hurt everything. It could alienate her from me fully.

She sits and my palms sweat profusely. Say it, damn you. Just say it.

"I have a break in an hour. Meet me at the usual," she whispers, followed by dial tone.

Never in my life have I run so fast. Not even when I was being chased by men on horseback in Russia, super-soldiers in stairways or across barren landscapes in Antarctica. My speed echoes my anticipation, to be near her, to touch her, to potentially taste her.

I sit for two hours at the usual. Every shadow that passes by sends my heart in a frenzy. But to no avail.

She never comes. I go home alone.

* * *

I would like to say I gave up. But, anyone who knows me would know I never do. Instead, I just write. Sometimes in these journals. Sometimes in a book about the paranormal. I have been in contact with several off the beaten path type of publishers who seem thoroughly interested in my "stories." I want to print a disclaimer at the front stating that the events were part of my life. But who would believe me? Too few do already.

I peck at the keyboard, spit sunflower seeds, rummage through old mental files and some actual ones I managed to make away with. I used to cherish the paper they were written on because I loved them so. They pale in comparison to her though.

I haven't talked to her in a month. It's tough but I manage…somehow.

I hear a noise and reach for my top left-hand drawer. Silently, I laugh because I have no gun. While I think I could handle myself physically at first, I later chide myself in thought. Who am I kidding? I usually end up without a gun anyway, just getting my ass kicked.

I don't turn around as I sit laughing under my breath. Come and take me! Do what you will.

Then it hits. The smell. The feeling she elicits in me. Slowly, I turn to meet her sad face. Somewhere in it, there is an apology for absence. I feel angry, cold, rejecting. I know not to let it get the better of me because I could lose her. But my human instincts win out over reason.

My face is grim and I do not smile as she takes small steps in my direction.

She opens her mouth, and then closes it. A tear slides down her cheek. Before, I would have run to her and wiped it away. But who is to say she needs that from me now? Or needs me at all.

"Mulder…" she begins again. I say nothing. I know nothing. I am blank.

She stares and I feel as lost as she does, even when my way is standing in front of me.

"I'm sorry," she stammers and rushes toward me.

Her embrace is ecstasy. My arms tremble with some long forgotten touch of desire to weave around her, into her, through her. I do not touch her for fear she will fracture in front of me. I have no energy to pick up the pieces anymore.

"I have missed you so. I just didn't know where I fit in this world," she cries.

"You fit with me," I state matter of fact. Because that is what this is. This is fact. We belong together. And it is for this reason that I reach for her. I hold her like a dying wish. I hold her because nothing fits in my arms like she does. I sniff her hair, the lilac beauty of it.

I take a step back and stare into her blue cornucopia. I see my reflection in her water, my son as well. I feel her extend on her tiptoes to reach my face, to graze her lips across mine. We kiss with a feather's touch, with the delicacy of soft breezes.

I want to think this is her homecoming, the return of something bigger than both of us.

But I never know for sure. Instead, I only hope.


End file.
